Hook & Ladder Estate Bottled Cabernet Sauvignon 2019, Los Amigos Ranch, Chalk Hill, Sonoma County, California

This Cabernet Sauvignon is carefully grown in the Chalk Hill region located in the northeast Russian River Valley. These grapes are exposed to warmer days and cool nights on our family’s Los Amigos Ranch, just south of Healdsburg. The unique weather of this area allows our Bordeaux varietals to ripen slowly and develop rich, complex flavors. This single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is aged for up to 20 months in a combination of French and American oak. With deep red magenta tones, this Los Amigos Cabernet Sauvignon exhibits intense, fragrant vanilla, rose, and elderberry-cedar. Instantly lush with bing cherry, dried tobacco, fine toasted oak, it finishes with trace cacao, sage, and black raspberry. Aged 20 months in American and French oak, 25% new. In 1970, San Francisco firefighter Cecil De Loach, and his wife Christine, purchased the prized Barbieri Ranch in Russian River Valley’s coveted Olivet Road district. Both came armed with advanced degrees in anthropology but no background in farming or grape growing. That said, they had long dreamt of finding land their family could own and work together. For his part, Louis Barbieri, whose father Itilo planted the vineyard in 1905, was gratified to pass the vineyard on to a family committed to honoring its past, and stewarding its future. During those early years, Cecil continued his ‘day job’ as an SF firefighter while he and Christine delved into their new roles as grape growers. They took classes both at Santa Rosa Junior College and UC Davis, read everything about grape growing and winemaking that they could get their hands on, and availed themselves of the generous mentoring offered by neighboring growers and vintners; many of whom had tended the area’s ‘old vines’ for decades. In 2003 Cecil and Christine launched Hook & Ladder Winery on Olivet Road, just down the street from their original de Loach Vineyards. Today, Hook & Ladder is helmed by grandson Jason De Loach, an accomplished winemaker who joined the winery in 2006.

$32.99